Thank you for having me today! I’m going to give a little background on the universe my new book, THE DAUGHTER STAR, is set in. This book is the first of three about the Grayline sisters, so I’m hoping to explore as many nooks and crannies of this universe as I can.

This universe is something new; it’s completely unconnected to the universe my EXTRAHUMANS series is set in. It’s set several hundred years in the future, when humans have become completely cut off from Earth. The basic idea is that an alien species moved humanity to a new star system in exchange for being able to harvest a kind of resource in Earth’s atmosphere. This destroyed Earth, but now humans have three new worlds to develop and expand on instead of one. Whether or not this was a good deal is a matter of intense debate.

The action mostly takes place in this star system, called the Family Ternary System. There are three stars: blue-white Father, yellow-white Mother, and red dwarf Daughter. Each star has a habitable planet. Adastre orbits Father, and is the most Earth-like of the three. The Adastrans are the descendants of what we might call the rich world here. Their society is technologically advanced, highly centralized and rather sterile. Adastrans are often tall, lithe and graceful, and by and large speak a dialect of English as their common language.

Nea orbits Mother, and is a much more massive world. This means the gravity is noticeably higher, which causes all kinds of problems for the nearly 20 billion humans who live there. Novans (inhabitants of Nea) are largely descended from less-wealthy countries on Earth, and thanks to the high gravity they tend to be short, squat, very muscular and prone to dying early. Novan societies are generally less technologically advanced except in the medical devices they developed to help people survive a high-gravity world. Novan politics are chaotic; there are hundreds of small countries loosely bound by a single world Commonwealth.

The other habitable planet is Haven, which orbits Daughter. Because the habitable zone of a red dwarf star is so close to the star, Haven is tidally locked, meaning one side is always facing the star. This means there’s only a small slice of Haven that humans can live on, the twilight area near the terminator. The sunward facing pole of Haven, the Noon Point, is a massive permanent hurricane, and the other pole, the Midnight Point, is cold and desolate. Humans from Nea and Adastre colonized this world not long after arriving in the system, and now wage war over who should control it. In fact, it’s this war on Haven that provides the backdrop for THE DAUGHTER STAR.

Marta Grayline is a space pilot from Gideon, a Novan country founded by a religious sect not long after humans left Earth. This is an extremely conservative, traditionalist country with some very outmoded ideas about women and family, which is why Marta ran away to space to join the Novan Trade Fleet when she was eighteen. Her parents, her little brother and her two sisters, Violet and Beth, still live there, and the story opens when the Haven War forces Marta to go home.

And then there’s the Abrax, who are the alien species who destroyed Earth and moved humanity. They’ve stuck around in the system and occasionally meddle in human affairs. They have a complex history, more of which Marta discovers as the book progresses. They are telepathic, they don’t have a single fixed shape, and they are rapidly dying out. They can form intense connections with certain humans, though the nature of that connection is different in each pairing. There are humans who help the Abrax, and humans who despise them. This is the brief overview of the world THE DAUGHTER STAR is set in. I’ll answer questions if you have them in the comments! The book was released yesterday (5/28/13). Thanks again for having me, and for reading!

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Susan Jane Bigelow is a librarian, SF/F author and political columnist, among other things. She has previously written about a variety of things from politics in Connecticut to memoir-ish nonfiction to science fiction/fantasy stories and novels. She also writes a weekly political column focusing on politics in the Nutmeg state. She enjoys biking, reading, Doctor Who and other things. She currently lives in Enfield, Connecticut with her partner and cats.